The Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska is the largest national forest in the United States at 16.7 million acres. Most of its area is part of the temperate rain forest WWF ecoregion, itself part of the larger Pacific temperate rain forest WWF ecoregion, is remote enough to be home to many species of endangered and rare flora and fauna; the Tongass, managed by the United States Forest Service, encompasses islands of the Alexander Archipelago and glaciers, peaks of the Coast Mountains. An international border with Canada runs along the crest of the Boundary Ranges of the Coast Mountains; the forest is administered from Forest Service offices in Ketchikan. There are local ranger district offices located in Craig, Juneau, Petersburg, Thorne Bay and Yakutat; the Alexander Archipelago Forest Reserve was established by Theodore Roosevelt in a presidential proclamation of 20 August 1902. Another presidential proclamation made by Roosevelt, on 10 September 1907, created the Tongass National Forest.

On 1 July 1908, the two forests were joined, the combined forest area encompassed most of Southeast Alaska. Further presidential proclamations of 16 February 1909 and 10 June, in 1925 expanded the Tongass. An early supervisor of the forest was William Alexander Langille. On September 4, 1971, Alaska Airlines Flight 1866 crashed in the Tongass National Forest, killing all 111 people on board. Timber harvest in Southeast Alaska consisted of individual handlogging operations up until the 1950s, focusing on lowlying areas and beach fringe areas. In the 1950s, in part to aid in Japanese recovery from World War II, the Forest Service set up long-term contracts with two pulp mills: the Ketchikan Pulp Company and the Alaska Pulp Company; these contracts were scheduled to last 50 years, intended to complement independent sawlog operations in the region. However, the two companies conspired to drive log prices down, put smaller logging operations out of business, were major and recalcitrant polluters in their local areas.

All timber sales in the Tongass were purchased by one of these two companies. In 1974, the exclusive KPC contract for 800,000 acres of old growth forest on Prince of Wales Island was challenged by the Point Baker Association led by Alan Stein, Chuck Zieske and Herb Zieske. Federal District Court judge James von der Heydt ruled in their favor in December 1975 and March 1976, enjoining clearcutting of over 150 square miles of the north end of Prince of Wales Island; the suit threatened to halt clearcutting in the United States. In 1976, Congress removed the Zieske injunction in passing the National Forest Management Act. Over half the old growth timber was removed there by the mid 1990s; the battle for buffer strips, to protect salmon streams from logging, which began in the Zieske v Butz lawsuit, continued through comments submitted to the major US Forest Service Environmental Impact Statements issued in subsequent 5 year intervals starting in 1979, continuing in the 1988 EIS. In 1990, A Federal District Court in Alaska, in a case called Stein v Barton, held the US Forest Service had to protect all salmon streams in the Tongass with buffer strips.

One of the claims in Stein v Barton for protection of the Salmon Bay Watershed was enacted into law when Congress Passed the Tongass Timber Reform Act. Much of the power of these companies lay in the long-term contracts themselves; the contracts guaranteed low prices to the pulp companies — in some cases resulting in trees being given away for "less than the price of a hamburger." The Tongass Timber Reform Act, enacted in 1990 reshaped the logging industry's relationship with the Tongass National Forest. The law's provisions cancelled a $40 million annual subsidy for timber harvest. Alaska Pulp Corporation and Ketchikan Pulp Corporation claimed that the new restrictions made them uncompetitive and closed down their mills in 1993 and 1997 and the Forest Service cancelled the remainders of the two 50-year timber contracts. In 2003, an appropriations bill rider required that all timber sales in the Tongass must be positive sales, meaning no sales could be sold that undervalued the "stumpage" rate, or the value of the trees as established by the marketplace.

However, the Forest Service conducts NEPA analyses and administrative operations to support these sales, as such, the government does not make a profit overall. Given the guaranteed low prices during contract days and the continued high cost of logging in Southeast Alaska today, one analysis concludes that, since 1980, the Forest Service has lost over one billion dollars in Tongass timber sales. Logging operations are not the only deficit-run programs, however; the Forest Service likens the overall deficit of the timber harvest program to the many other programs the agency operates at a deficit, including trail and campground maintenance and subsistence programs. High-grading has been prevalent in the Tongass throughout the era of industrial-scale logging there. For example, the forest type with the largest concentration of big trees—volume class 7—originally compri

God and Other Minds is a 1967 book by the American philosopher of religion Alvin Plantinga which re-kindled philosophical debate on the existence of God in Anglo-American philosophical circles by arguing that belief in God was like belief in other minds: although neither could be demonstrated conclusively against a determined sceptic both were fundamentally rational. Though Plantinga modified some of his views on the soundness of the ontological argument and on the nature of epistemic rationality, he still stands by the basic theses of the book. God and Other Minds: A Study of the Rational Justification of Belief in God was published by Cornell University Press in 1967. An edition with a new preface by Plantinga was published in 1990; the book explores the rationality of belief in God. In Part, I, Plantinga examines a number of traditional arguments for God's existence and concludes that none is successful. In Part II, he considers and rejects some major arguments against belief in God, including the problem of evil, the paradox of omnipotence, verificationism.

In Part III, he explores various analogies between belief in God and belief in other minds. He concludes that these two beliefs are in the same epistemic boat: if one is rationally justified, so is the other. Since belief in other minds is rational, Plantinga argues, so is belief in God; the book has the following chapters: Part I: Natural Theology Ch 1: The Cosmological Argument Ch 2: The Ontological Argument - I Ch 3: The Ontological Argument - II Ch 4: The Teleological ArgumentPart II: Natural Atheology Ch 5: The Problem of Evil Ch 6: The Free Will Defense Ch 7: Verificationism and other AtheologicaPart III: God and Other Minds Ch 8: Other Minds and Analogy Ch 9: Alternatives to the Analogical Position Ch 10: God and Analogy Michael A. Slote in The Journal of Philosophy considered that "his book is one of the most important to have appeared in this century on the philosophy of religion, makes outstanding contributions to our understanding of the problem of other minds as well". According to philosopher William Lane Craig and Other Minds helped to revitalize philosophy of religion after the palmy days of logical positivism by applying "the tools of analytic philosophy to questions in the Philosophy of Religion with an unprecedented rigor and creativity."Plantinga's response to the problem of evil--the so-called free will defense, which argues that it is possible that God could not have created a world with a better balance of good over evil than does the actual world--provoked considerable scholarly discussion.

Problem of other minds SEP article on Other Minds

Kado Station is a railway station in the town of Mitane, Yamamoto District Akita Prefecture, operated by East Japan Railway Company. Kado Station is served by the Ōu Main Line, is located 338.4 km from the terminus of the line at Fukushima Station. Kado Station has one side platform and one island platform serving three tracks, connected by a footbridge. Track 2 is used for freight trains changing direction. Kado Station is a simple consignment station, administered by Higashi-Noshiro Station, operated by Mitane municipal authority, with point-of-sales terminal installed. Ordinary tickets, express tickets, reserved-seat tickets for all JR lines are on sale. Kado Station was opened on August 1, 1902 as a station on the Japanese Government Railways, serving the town of Kado, Akita; the JGR became the JNR after World War II. The station was absorbed into the JR East network upon the privatization of the JNR on April 1, 1987. A new station building was completed in July 2007. In fiscal 2018, the station was used by an average of 135 passengers daily.

National Route 7 Kotooka Post Office Kotooka Junior High School List of railway stations in Japan Official website